“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”– Aldous Huxley

I woke up this past Saturday morning and opened my local paper to find out that all was well. An Associated Press article declared a healthy jobs market, fantastic auto sales, a surging housing market, and a stock market rocketing to new all-time highs. What’s not to love? If the mainstream media says the economy is as good as new, it must be so. Why should we let facts get in the way of a good storyline? The stock market has surged to 2007 highs, so the country’s employment situation must be strong.

The chart above tells a slightly different story. The S&P 500 has regained almost all its losses since October 2007 as Bernanke and Washington politicians chose to save Wall Street and screw over Main Street. The working age population has risen by 12.8 million since 2007 and there are 4 million less Americans employed. The December Household Survey from the BLS being touted by the mainstream media as proof of a jobs recovery told a slightly different story:

The number of unemployed Americans went up by 126,000 in one month

Another 169,000 Americans left the workforce evidently because their stock market gains made them wealthy.

There are 250,000 more Americans unemployed than there were in September 2012.

There are 6,000 less Americans employed than there were in October 2012.

This is just the picture over the last few months. The picture since 2007 is beyond horrific, as more than 10 million Americans have left the workforce. Everyone knows people willingly leave the labor force when the economy crashes and their net worth is reduced by 30%. Who needs a paying job then? Just because there are 101 million working age Americans not working and the labor participation rate of 63.6% is at a three decade low, certainly doesn’t mean we aren’t experiencing a tremendous jobs recovery, according to the mainstream media.

The deep thinkers at CNBC, Fox, CNN and the rest of the captured corporate status quo mouthpieces, propagate the false storyline that the reason for Americans leaving the workforce is Baby Boomers retiring. Considering the average Boomer has $90,000 of total savings and 28% of them have less than $1,000 saved, I suspect there are few willingly leaving the workforce. The Boomers have taken on 4 million additional jobs since the low point in 2009, while the 16 to 54 year olds have lost an additional 2.9 million jobs. Does this reflect a strengthening jobs market? Does the fact that real hourly wages have fallen for the last two years reflect an improving labor market?

Inquiring minds might wonder how auto sales could be booming when there are 4 million less employed Americans and real wages are falling. Of course, mainstream media faux journalists aren’t paid to inquire, think critically, or even think at all. They are paid to regurgitate propaganda designed to keep the masses sedated and ignorant. The “fabulous” rebound in auto sales has been buoyed by the return of easy money lending, even to deadbeat borrowers with lousy credit histories. There is a reason the Federal government hasn’t attempted to spin off their 80% control of Ally Financial (aka GMAC, Ditech, Rescap). The Feds are attempting to manufacture a recovery by doling out subprime auto loans to anyone who can scratch an X on a loan document and offering 0% loans over 7 years to good credits. How exactly does a finance company generate a profit by making 0% loans for seven years and approving loans to people with no means of paying them back? Experian recently noted that 44% of ALL auto loans have been to subprime borrowers over the last year. When a financing company doesn’t have to worry about profits or loan losses, everyone gets a Cadillac Escalade. The losses on these subprime loans will be in the billions when the next leg down in this Crisis hits. The taxpayer will unknowingly pick up the tab, just as they have been doing for the last five years. The trend in this chart is nothing but a Federal government induced fraud.

PhD in Stupidity

The Federal government induced sham auto recovery is small peanuts compared to the bubble they are blowing in the higher education realm. Since the Federal government took over 85% of the student loan market in 2009, the debt outstanding has surged to over $1 trillion from below $600 billion. The Feds don’t care about credit risk or loan losses. You’re on the hook for the losses. The purpose for doubling the amount of student loans was to artificially lower the unemployment rate by removing as many people from the labor force as possible. The 600,000 University of Phoenix enrollees getting their on-line master’s degrees in basket weaving while sitting in their mother’s basement, subsidized with $20,000 loans from the taxpayer, didn’t count as unemployed.

Enrollment in these diploma mills has begun to plunge, as the scam has been revealed. The New York Times reported that:

“Enrollments at the University of Phoenix and in the for-profit sector over all have been declining in the last two years, partly because of growing competition from other online providers, including nonprofit and public universities, and a steady drumroll of negative publicity about the sector’s recruiting abuses, low graduation rates and high default rates … including many charges that the schools enrolled students who had almost no chance of succeeding, to get their federal student aid.”

Enrolling students who have no chance of graduating is exactly what the Obama Administration and the status quo want.

Based upon the chart below you would think the United States is producing the brightest bunch of young people in U.S. history. Nothing could be further from the truth. Only 43% of the 1.66 million private and public school students who took the college-entrance exam posted scores showing they are prepared to do well in college, according to data released by the College Board, the nonprofit group that administers the SAT. The SAT data mirror scores from the ACT college-entrance exam which showed about 75% of students failed to meet college-readiness standards. If SAT scores are at decade lows, how could college enrollment be at record highs? Our government controlled public school system is graduating functionally illiterate dullards and the government is then subsidizing these subprime students as they matriculate into substandard colleges across the land. Approximately 3.4 million seniors are graduating from our high schools every year. The 1.66 million seniors who took the SAT exam are the cream of the crop. If the 50% of students who took the SAT exam could score so pitifully, imagine how dimwitted the 50% of students who didn’t even take the exam must be. The upshot of these tests are that only 700,000 of all the graduating high school seniors (21%) are capable of getting a B minus or above in college.

Think about that for one second. Only 21% of all graduating high school seniors are intelligent enough to get a B minus in college, but 70% of them are enrolling in college. Of course enrolling in college and graduating college are two different things. Only 30% actually graduate college. The other 40% get drunk, fornicate, sleep late, fail, rack up gobs of debt, and then drop out. There are approximately 13 million 18 to 24 year olds enrolled in college today and at least 6 million of them have little to no chance of graduating. If the Federal government was not subsidizing them with loans, they would rightfully be looking for jobs geared to their intellectual capabilities. Would tuition rates be soaring if there were 6 million less drones matriculating into one of the 4,000 mostly mediocre higher learning institutions in this country?

The Federal government bureaucrats who think they can control the levers of finance to steer our economy to greater heights are creating a new subprime bubble. The absolute implosion of the for profit diploma mills, that have fed like bloated pigs at the Federal loan trough, is the Bear Stearns moment for the massive student loan losses that will be foisted on the shoulders of the American taxpayer. The deceptive schemes, fraud, and financial aid manipulation practices of the publicly traded diploma mills – Corinthian Colleges (down 90%), ITT (down 90%), Apollo Group (down 80%) and DeVry (down 60%) have been revealed, as their ill- gotten profits have evaporated and their stock prices have crashed. Enrollment at the king of worthless online degrees, the University of Phoenix, has plunged from 600,000 to 400,000 and they are closing 115 of their 227 campuses. The proof that much of the student loan bubble has been created by these for-profit shysters can be seen by the fact that 60% of all student loans are owed by people over 30 years old, with 33% owed by people over 40 years old. These people bought into the re-training fallacy perpetuated by government drones and mainstream media mouthpieces.

But still the Federal government continues to blow the bubble bigger and bigger as non-revolving consumer debt has reached all-time highs. Peter Thiel recently compared this bubble to the housing bubble we are still dealing with:

“We have a bubble in education, like we had a bubble in housing…everybody believed you had to have a house, they’d pay whatever it took. Today, everybody believes that we need to go to college, and people will pay– whatever it takes. There are all sorts of vocational careers that pay extremely well today, so the average plumber makes as much as the average doctor. I did not realize how screwed up the education system is. We now have $1 trillion in student debt in the U.S. Cynically you can say it’s paid for $1 trillion of lies about how good education is.”

Delinquency rates have already begun to skyrocket as the diploma mill scam implodes, dropouts can’t make loan payments with their EBT cards and even graduates from legitimate colleges are stuck waitressing at TGI Fridays and can’t make their payments. Millions of millenials are ensnared in the chains of debt servitude, with no chance of escape.

Delinquency rates on student loans made in the past two years stand at 15%, according to FICO, versus 12.4% for loans made from 2005 to 2007. This is proof that loans doled out since the Federal government took control of the market have been distributed willy-nilly in a frantic effort to artificially reduce the unemployment rate. Average student- loan debt last year rose to $27,253 from $17,233 in 2005, with almost 605 of bank managers surveyed in December expecting delinquencies to worsen in six months, according to FICO. Andrew Jennings, chief analytics officer of Fair Issac, said in a statement:

“This situation is simply unsustainable and we’re already suffering the consequences. When wage growth is slow and jobs are not as plentiful as they once were, it is impossible for individuals to continue taking out ever-larger student loans without greatly increasing the risk of default.”

When subprime mortgages blew up, at least there was collateral to alleviate some of the losses. When the subprime auto loans blow up, at least there will be vehicles to repossess. Student loan debts are the ultimate in subprime, with no collateral and millions of jobless debtors. The situation is much worse than the delinquency numbers reveal. More than half of the student loans are in deferment, grace periods, or forbearance, meaning they are not currently requiring repayment. This means the true delinquency rates are twice as high as the reported figure of 15%. What happens next can be succinctly summed up by the esteemed economist John Kenneth Galbraith:

The involuntary taxpayer bailout for this Federal Government created disaster will exceed $200 billion after the shit is done hitting the fan.

Do You Want Pepperoni on that Housing Recovery?

Everywhere I turn I’m hearing about the strong housing recovery that is propelling our economy, generating jobs and spurring a resurgence in retail spending by the millions of deleveraged consumers. Wall Street paid economists on CNBC, NYT economic “journalists”, and even the Fox News blond bimbo brigade all assure me the housing market is in a strong recovery and it’s the best time to buy. There are just two small problems with the story. None of the propaganda spouted by the mouthpieces of the kleptocracy is supported by the facts. And what little uptick in sales and prices that has occurred is due to collusion, fraud and manipulation by Wall Street, the Federal Reserve, the Treasury Department, and connected crony corporate interests.

I challenge anyone to show me the tremendous housing recovery on the new home sales chart below. New homes sales have “surged” to an annual pace of 369,000, only 74% below the 2006 peak and about 50% below the long term average. New home sales fell in December at the fastest rate since February 2011. Existing home sales also fell in December, are pacing at 1999 levels, and are still 30% below 2006 levels. In a country of 115 million households, with mortgage rates at all-time lows, there were a total of 26,000 new homes sold in December, and only 10,000 of them were actually built. For some perspective, new home sales are at the same level as they were in 1967 when the U.S. population was 200 million.

The kleptocrats’ master plan has multiple dimensions designed to lure unsuspecting dupes back into the market. The Federal Reserve has bought over $1 trillion of toxic mortgage debt, freeing the criminal Wall Street banks to start raping the American public again. Bernanke has driven mortgage rates to near all-time lows by tripling his balance sheet, with promises to quadruple it before the end of the year. By driving real interest rates below zero Bernanke has the dual purpose of driving people into the stock market for a positive return and luring “investors” into the housing market.

The Wall Street part of this grand scheme has been to delay the foreclosure process on millions of homes, thereby restricting the amount of inventory on the market. By artificially creating an inventory “shortage”, they have been able to drive prices higher, with the purpose of trying to get the 25% of underwater homeowners back to breakeven. The Treasury Department, through their captured entities (Fannie, Freddie, FHA) are guaranteeing 95% of all mortgages, with the FHA requiring only 3.5% down payments, with the hundreds of billions in present and future losses being incurred by the American taxpayer. You’ve heard of the cycle of life. This is the government cycle of fraud.

The last part of the plan has been to lure investors into the market. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have sold huge blocks of foreclosed homes to connected friends of Wall Street at below market rates so they could convert them to rental properties. This has further artificially reduced inventory available for sale, and jacked up prices by as much as 20% in the former bubble markets of Phoenix, Las Vegas and California. Investors and flippers account for 30% of all home sales, with another 24% of home sales listed as distressed sales. Sure sounds like a healthy market to me. With this full court press by the powers that be to produce a housing recovery, the chart below reveals the utter ineptitude of their effort. Real home prices, even using the fake government manipulated CPI, have barely budged from their lows and sit at 1990 levels. Real home prices are still down 40% from their 2006 highs.

If a true housing recovery was underway how could mortgage purchase applications be at 1997 levels? If housing was recovering there would be more mortgage applications. It really is that simple. Do supposed journalists have any critical thinking skills or are they just playing their assigned role in this kleptocracy?

Essentially, the kleptocrats’ primary purpose has been to protect and enhance the wealth of the oligarchs that control Wall Street, Washington DC, and corporate America. They have achieved their goal, while destroying the middle class and sentencing unborn generations to a life sentence of debt servitude.

If we have been experiencing a solid jobs recovery, strong automobile sales, a resurgence of consumer spending, and rising home sales and home prices, how could GDP be negative in the 4th quarter? The mainstream media immediately declared it the best negative GDP of all-time. They pompously declared that GDP would have been positive if government defense spending hadn’t plummeted. These disgraceful excuses for journalists failed to mention the huge surge in government and defense spending in the 3rd quarter just prior to the presidential election that accounted for a 3.1% GDP and helped get Obama re-elected. A less trusting person than myself might question why the surge in government spending prior to the election.

Did the mainstream media government mouthpieces question the absolutely laughable 0.60% inflation rate used to calculate the 4th quarter GDP? No they didn’t. That wouldn’t support their storyline of recovery. Using even the bastardized CPI figure of 2.0% would have produced a -1.5% GDP figure. Using real inflation figures over time reveals what every middle class family in America knows in their bones – the economy has essentially been in recession since the early 2000s. The massive dose of debt issued by the government has masked the true nature of our economic decline.

All is not well. Any awake and aware citizen knows the economic, financial, societal and social fabric of this country is in tatters, and is getting progressively worse by the day. Since this supposed economic recovery began in mid-2009, the country has added 4 million jobs, more than 100% of which went to workers over the age of 55, forced into the workforce by Bernanke’s zero interest rate policy. Over this same time frame of economic recovery, 16 million Americans went on food stamps. How could this possibly happen if the economy has been recovering? Either the government and mainstream media are lying about the economic recovery or the Obama administration has been fraudulently encouraging people to go on food stamps to win votes in elections. Which of these truths is more palatable to your sensibilities?

It comes down to this. The monied interests, high financiers, corporate interests, captured politicians, government apparatchiks, and corporate media have a vested interest in maintaining the corrupt and destructive status quo. They have become rich and powerful through their manipulation of the currency, ravenous sacking of the national wealth, destruction of the working middle class, and ability to use mass media propaganda to convince the willfully ignorant masses to learn to love their debt servitude. Our once proud, liberty minded, self-sufficient nation of freedom loving individuals has devolved into a kleptocracy, where a small cadre of powerful men run the show solely to increase the personal wealth and political power of officials and the ruling class at the expense of the wider population. They are essentially running a state sponsored embezzlement and Ponzi scheme to pillage the wealth of the dumbed down, sedated, technologically distracted masses. Our entire system has been captured and we are entering the final stages of decay and ultimately a day of reckoning where the guilty and innocent alike will suffer the awful consequences of currency collapse, death and destruction on a wide scale, and likely civil and world war.

“The Fed is now engaged in a control fraud, and what appears to be racketeering in conjunction with a few big investment banks. They may have entered into it with good intentions, but they seem to have been turned towards deceit and corruption. This is not an historical event, but an ongoing theft in conjunction with a number of Wall Street banks, and politicians whom they have paid off through a corrupt system of campaign financing and influence peddling. This is nothing new in history if one reads the un-sanitized version. But people never think it can happen today, that somehow yesterday things were different, as if one is looking at some distant, foreign land. This is a facet of the illusion of general progress.

We are now in the cover-up stage of a scandal, similar to Watergate when the White House was stone-walling. The difference is that the corruption and capture of the government is much more pervasive now, and includes a significant portion of the mainstream media, so meaningful reform is difficult. Most of what has transpired so far has been designed to distract and placate the people in their righteous anger. The Fed deceives the Congress and the public, turns a blind eye to glaring conflicts of interest, and is essentially debasing the currency while transferring the wealth of the nation to their cronies. And still the regulators do not enforce the laws they have, and Washington drags its feet while accepting buckets of cash from the perpetrators.” – Jesse

The entire system is corrupt to its core. Both political parties, regulatory agencies, Wall Street, the Federal Reserve, and mainstream media are participants in this enormous fraud. They grow more desperate and bold by the day. The lies, misinformation and propaganda being spewed on a daily basis become more outrageous and audacious. They are using the Big Lie method on a grand scale. They frantically need to lure the muppets into the stock market and the housing market to keep the game going a little longer. You can sense we are reaching a tipping point. The system they have created is mathematically unsustainable. Therefore, it will not be sustained. The world is going mad. Governments across the globe are all trying to out debase each other. Austerity and inflation for the peasants and caviar and champagne for the Davos class is the chosen path. All is not well. Ben Bernanke and the oligarchs running the show will be immortalized in history books forever when this farce comes to a spectacular conclusion.

129 Comments

Wyoming Mike says:

The biggest fear for me is the utter cluelessness of society as a whole. Glued to their electronic devices furnished with debt, they stagger through their existence unable to form a coherent thought or claim a single accomplishment.

Our kids are just as bad. 30% of the kids in our girls youth league are obese, lazy, and already addicted to gadgets. It’d be higher, but most of the really fat ones don’t play.

Thank you for slicing through all of the bullshit Jim. We are truly doomed.

NPR this Am was touting the development that this years deficit was going to come in at only 840 billion dollars. Much less than the last 4 years averages. Funny they did not mention that in order to come up with this fraud they did not manage to tell the listener that 60% of the debt is being sold to ourselves and the twist 40B a month is separate.

That’s right. They are no longer calling debt to our selves debt. I guess that means we will never have to pay it back.

The National Debt has increased by $409 billion in FY13 after 127 days. That is $3.22 billion per day. At the current rate, the National Debt will go up by $1.175 trillion in FY13. That’s only $335 billion more than the CBO prediction. Just a rounding error for a government drone being paid to spew the propaganda of the ruling class.

I had no idea the online diploma scam had imploded. That is some good news.

If you go to an Ivy league school, you’d better pay back your loans:

Student Loan Bubble Forces Yale, Penn To Sue Their Own Students

Needy U.S. borrowers are defaulting on almost $1 billion in federal student loans earmarked for the poor, leaving schools such as Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania with little choice except to sue their graduates.

From most estimates we will need to shed about 20 trillion in real debt and prolly another 75trillion in promised debt. If we string it to say 35 Trillion will it mean anything really changed? I can not see where this dollar we have now gets to the other side. I could care less if you have 45 billion in equities and 70 million in cash you better have the means to make bread to live. The social net will be freaking gone. If you are old with no family you.will.die.

Johanssen titled one of her blogs “Suicide Among Student Debtors: Who’s Thought About It?” and says she was stunned by the responses.

“I was very actively looking into suicide until I got on anti-depressants. Now I have to take happy pills every day to keep the suicidal urges at a minimum level,” wrote one person.

“You are correct to ask the question. Many of the folks who are incredibly deep in law school debt will end up killing themselves. I think, in the next 1-3 years, we are going to see absolutely massive numbers of law school graduate suicides.”

One person wrote, “I think about jumping from the 27th floor window of my office every day.” Another claimed that prior to writing his comment, he had been sitting in his running car with the garage door shut.

“I plan to douse myself and light myself aflame on the Capitol steps, to draw attention to the dire situation of the millions of indentured educated citizens who, like me, have no options, plus a predatory banking system coming after us,” he wrote. “I will be setting myself on fire, and the student debt debacle will hopefully come to the forefront of public consciousness.”

Yesterday I went to a job interview. I don’t really need a job but was curious about this story that had appeared in the local paper a couple of weeks prior and marked it on my calender.

XXXXXX Financial LLC, a debt collections company, is hiring 70 employees for its call center for 2013 and expects to employ an additional 200 in the next three years

So I went out to see what was going on. I got there early expecting a long line of applicants but there was no one there yet at 9:45 AM though the paper said the ‘job fair’ would be from 10-1. It was located at a nice office park and as I walked up to the door to look inside a man opened the door and beckoned me inside. He handed me a clip board and an application and set me in a chair in the atrium to fill it out. A few minutes later another man shows up and joins me filling out the application. He was in his fifties ( I’m 60) and had worked for the airlines for many years but was now employed as a security guard.

We complete our applications and are invited to a meeting room where the companies founder and his top employees make a presentation of the companies history and operations and benefits for the two of us! I was kind of surprised they would do this for just two applicants they hadn’t even yet screened but they had been in business since 1992 and both bought receivables and did collection work for companies such as Target and other and also has a software division selling proprietary debt collection software. Seemed an established prosperous outfit.

The pay was $11-14 per hour plus 7% of your collections. If you were good at it I suppose you could make a decent living but I doubt they keep people for long if they can’t produce. After the presentation I am taken for an interview by a tall blonde lady while the ex airline guy is interviewed by another employee. She asks if I have ever done collections and I honestly answer that as a matter of fact I had though I had a little more leverage in that I could turn off a customers gas and water if they did not pay. She asks why I was interested in the job and I say it seems a good industry to be in as there is no shortage of bad consumer debt to collect and that it is something a retired person could do as a second career. After we conclude my interview she walks me to the door and I see maybe half a dozen people have arrived in the interim and are filling out applications in the atrium.

I was surprised at the light turnout for what seemed to be a fairly decent entry level job. They did offer paid medical insurance of some sort and only required a high school diploma and basic computer skills. Anyone ever do telephone collection work? I suspect they do a credit and background check on their applicants as a I had to sign a release and that may disqualify a lot of people from bothering to apply but, OTOH, this could be about as secure a job as one could hope for if you have any knack for squeezing money out of people.

If debt is an addiction, then the banksters and criminals in Washington are the best pushers in the world.

The United States of Debt Addiction
Originally posted at GoldSilver.com

$16.7 trillion dollars. That is our current national debt. $12.8 trillion dollars. That is the amount households carry in mortgage and consumer debt. We are now addicted to debt to lubricate the wheels of our financial system.

There is nothing wrong with debt per se, but it is safe to say that too much debt relative to how much revenue is being produced is a sign of economic problems. At the core of our current financial mess is how we use debt as a parachute for any problem. We’ve been masking the shrinking of the middle class by allowing households to take on too much debt for a couple of decades.

The results were not positive. Too this degree, we have now created a massive moral hazard economy where savings are punished into oblivion. There is very little incentive to put your money in a bank account yielding zero percent interest when real inflation is eating away at your money like a hungry wolf. So what do people do? Well many simply cannot save and therefore choose to go into debt to finance cars, housing, and education with very little down. Where does this debt addiction lead us?

“Our once proud, liberty minded, self-sufficient nation of freedom loving individuals has devolved into a kleptocracy, where a small cadre of powerful men run the show solely to increase the personal wealth and political power of officials and the ruling class at the expense of the wider population”

It was always a kleptocracy/oligarcy. I has always been this, everywhere. The different flavors just use different mouthpieces….president, prime minister, king, czar, premier, emperor, caliph, pharaoh, etc. Political/economic system vary as well: capitalism, communism, socialism, …ism, etc.

The underlying power structures are always the same. Hierarchy. Pyramid. It’s all we know. Human beings can aspire to more…but only for a while. Human beings are too corruptible.

Things will have to be torn down before they can be renewed. I think this is what you are referring to as the ‘fourth turning’. What that will look like, I don’t know. Won’t be pretty.

Even after it runs it’s course though, it will be more of the same….the next oligarchy. I sometimes read sites that talk about life after peak oil and how it will be some agrarian, egalitarian paradise. They must have forgotten to read their history. Human nature will not change.

Back when I had to do delinquent bills for my company the best line I ever got off was to a restaurant owner who owed over $7000. I always tried to collect face to face even if it could get dangerous. The owner starts getting belligerant with me when I cut him off and said ” Look if you don’t give me the $7000 now the only thing that’s going to be eating here today are the cockroaches”. He wrote me a check too!

I am a fan of online education, if only because it tends to break the university monopoly.

I hate that universities have a monopoly on credentialing. How big a scam is that?

They charge a fortune for a service that can be provided with very little overhead. They cram students into programs for which there is little to no job market and propagandize them into thinking the scrap a paper they get at the end will help them.

Most professors make big bucks these days for very little work and almost no accountability.

“Native people all over the world lived in harmony with nature for thousands, even tens of thousands of years with no debt and the cradle to grave security of the tribe. No one starved because he had not where all those around him had too much. People are still living this way TODAY.”

Those same people are also lucky if they can smelt metal, let alone put a man on the moon.

Ironically, both total spending and total debt issuance in the past quarter increased, which means that far from being austere, the US actually spent more, not less, i.e., the opposite of austerity. And while it is true that Defense spending declined by a tiny amount in the past quarter compared to the year ago, it was more than offset by a surge in Medicare and Medicaid, as well as Social Security, or, as they are better known, welfare.

And, as the CBO yesterday showed, these two components of US spending, which together account for half of all US spending and which couldn’t be funded by all US revenues even if the government spent $0.00 for all other programs, which will soar in the coming years as US society ages, as more workers retire, and as more are reliant on Uncle Sam for the payment of every bill. So the next time someone say that the US has a defense spending problem and nothing else, show them this chart

The looming danger is that as the Federal government becomes the lender to and creditor of more and more people it can exercise the same type of control, even over nominally independent people, as it does over the poor and dependent. A graduate with $50,000 in student debt owed, not to a bank or other private lender, but to the Federal government is not going to be unaware of which political party is more likely to forgive that debt or ease the conditions of its repayment.

Already Obama has begun offering ‘alternative’ repayment plans if one does ‘public service’ work as defined by the Federal government. How long will it be before ‘informant’ is classified as ‘public service’ and rewarded with debt forgiveness?

We need to prohibit the Federal government from being a lender to or creditor of any citizens or, alternatively, prohibit any citizen from voting if they are indebted to the Federal government.

As defined in the National Defense Authorization Act; Title X, Subtitle D, sub-sections 1021 and 1022:

You have been designated a malcontent and are now considered a threat to National Security of the United States of America. The Stellar Wind Worldwide HydraSquid Algorithm has detected an anomaly from your IP address and hereby orders you to surrender yourself to the nearest law enforcement agency.

A Skynet airborne drone has been dispatched to your MGRS coordinates to ensure compliance with this directive. Upon your voluntary arrival at LEA, you will then be relocated to one of the DHS re-education facilities in an undisclosed location.

I don’t like online “universities” but I also don’t like the way so-called real universities are screwing students with online classes. It’s not the way out of the weeds, imho. Neither is making college a $10K 4 year guaranteed slam-dunk like Governor Perry, the ex-cheerleader wants to do

We need to have fewer kids in college and more kids learning how to become organic farmers.

The kids who do deserve to go to the universities deserve to learn from professors who look them in the eyeballs and actually teach them things that are worth knowing.

I’m 57 years old and I can quote things that some damn fine teachers said to me in the classroom nearly 40 years ago…and that was at a podunk state college in the Texas sticks. I will never forget those dedicated individuals.

My kids don’t seem to be getting the same quality, even though the cost has multipled well over 10X.

i’d like to chime in on this so-called housing recovery. from my personal experience the author is correct–it’s phony. like a lot of other idiots, i bought a condo in 2006 in a major city center and lived there for 2 years and had been renting it for the last 4 years. i decided to sell it because the condo fees and criminal property taxes were going up beyond what i could reasonably charge to rent it. so, i put it on the market. in this phony recovery, i learned two weeks later there was a short sale in the building. this was over four years after the meltdown. a chinese man offered me cash 40k below asking price. i took the offer and got a 35% total haircut. that’s the recovery, getting humiliated by the chinese and losing my shirt. but i took the beating nonetheless. it’s the penalty for being stupid. my question is: when are us bond holders going to get the beating and the damn haircut?

Native people work an average of TWO hours a day obtaining the necessities of life. How many do you work? 50 a week? 60? Plus another 10 hours a week commute time? Is western civilization really as smart as we think?

“Qualified Written Requests” under RESPA put mortgage servicers in a troublesome place. But there’s law on their side to help distinguish legitimate issues from abuse and harassment,”

Hahahaha, a troublesome place, indeed, poor whining American Bankers Association shill. If he thought it was bad then, he never would have imagined the likes of Mary Malone and many others, nor the demise of senile judges brought out of retirement to rubber stamp fraudclosures.

Rakoff’s ruling could have an impact on similar litigation pending in New York courts, including MBIA‘s multibillion-dollar lawsuit against Bank of America for breaching its representations and warranties on MBIA-guaranteed bonds.

Assured Guaranty’s expert, Rebecca Walzak, found that 484 out of 600 randomly selected loans had material breaches.
~
Of course, Forbes finally plays the MSM game with a “look over here” close blaming borrowers:

“Lying on a mortgage application is a federal crime, by the way.”

Right. Guess they didn’t get the William K. Black memo: “Lenders put the lie in liar’s loans.” Document fraud began even before the close and is endemic through the paper chain (or electronic lies).

This is just the first putback case that has gone to trial. According to a report at Reuters, other suits have been filed by insurers such as MBIA Inc. (NYSE: MBI) and Ambac Financial Group against J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM), Credit Suisse Group A.G. (NYSE: CS) and Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC), among others.

In the earlier Ambac suit, a tranche of 5,000 mortgages’ analysis indicated 88% were flawed.

Good article.
Would make one comment, that the auto finance companies still make a profit at 0%, because the buyer will be paying full asking price for the car. A grand or 2 out of the purchase price goes to GMAC. That said, if you are a full cash buyer, can haggle your way down from the list price by about that same amount.
Anyway thx, a good read JQ…

[…] Some rather insightful commentary from Jim Quinn at The Burning Platform. Colorful as always, and some nice charts on housing and employment thrown in the mix as well. You can read the rest here. […]

In a nutshell, here is what think needs doing to overhaul the education system. It will take one or two generations to have an impact:

– transition a high percentage of high school students into trade schools/tech schools or similar after year 9 or 10
– stop funding arts/humanities tertiary educations except to perhaps a handful of VERY high achievers. All others wanting to study those subjects need to self-fund.
– grant tertiary student loans and funding only to the sciences/math/engineering/computer science/IT and pehaps business. Only the top perhaps 25 percent of all high school students qualify for funding. Make it based on HS performance and achievement. Students failing to graduate on time would have their loans pulled.
– provide free tertiary education to top 10% students who want to study to become teachers. No funding for any other teacher prospects to be given. Students receiving the free education would owe a term of service for it.
– Require all schools receiving federal funding to provide for teacher’s education.
– Provide funding for students in the middle range of students to study trades/ etc. Effectively transition community colleges to trade schools.

The result of this would be to see education transition to the most economically valuable fields, and to see the quality of teachers rise from the bottom half of all HS students to the top ten percent. It would see more tech savvy citizens, and far fewer arts grads. It woud funnel money into areas with a payback, instead of into a black hole.

The value would not be truly seen for decades. But eventually it would pay off. The current system is a failure and is taking the country into catastrophe.

1) 17 tril debt at 1.8% rate-
2) Obamacare taxes in effect but spending not-so 2013 is aberration
3) deficit is cash flow budget-a) tons of off budget stuff and b) and what about GAAP loss of 6.5 trillion for 2012?
4) GDP assumption is ~4%-since we are negative now–4% just might be a stretch
5) wonder what other BS is in there-wish we had a budget to work with.

People will be surprised and shocked when the collapse comes. Not most of us.

Eddie – “I’m 57 years old and I can quote things that some damn fine teachers said to me in the classroom nearly 40 years ago…and that was at a podunk state college in the Texas sticks. I will never forget those dedicated individuals.”

I had to go back and check if i was using the moniker “Eddie”. Kill Bill is messing with my mind so much i don’t who i’m not anymore.

Eddie – unfortunately, soft and easy will not work. That ship has sailed.

DaveD – you are certainly correct. The prospects of politicians taking the hard, necessary steps are zero. Vested interests would squeal like pigs.

My career was based on doing the hard stuff to salvage ruined plants. Take two aspirin and call me in the morning does not work when the patient has gangrene and a burst appendix. Amputation and surgery are required and any delays are fatal.

Many people think that problems require complex solutions. My experience is quite the opposite. Generally, the solutions are easy, but the implementation requires a firm hand. Any sane person can see the problems that exist in education. What is required is someone with guts to blow up the current system and replace it in its entirety. That person or group does not exist.

The day I quit worrying about keeping my job and instead focused on doing my job was the day I stopped being mediocre and became successful. We need politicians and teachers to do the same.

Admin – Great read. All is well.Good start.You just have to remain positive and the dark clouds will be replaced by silver linings.
Even though all issuance of government policy is steeped in fraud and statistics based on lies , the path to recovery lies in positive thinking.
Think positive thoughts and they will manifest as reality bearign fruit.

“Native people work an average of TWO hours a day obtaining the necessities of life. How many do you work? 50 a week? 60? Plus another 10 hours a week commute time? Is western civilization really as smart as we think?”

I don’t disagree with you that this type of ‘living with nature’ society would ‘seem’ to be peaceful and idealistic. However, even tribes can grow large enough that a primitive oligarchy can begin to take shape.

Admin,
How in the hell you put this stuff together amazes me. Great read for a pre-storm Thursday morning. I will be sending this out to my son at Umass. My wife and I are working hard to pay for his college outright so that he is not saddled with the devastating burden of student debt. What kills us is that we see some people get all sorts of student aid that have no right even being in college and will inevitably end up failing. These fools are studying for useless humanities degrees if they ever do actually graduate. My son proudly studies for his Chemical Enginerring Degree to be useful member of society. This weeks lab is in distillation, I call that useful. Middle class two parent working schlubs like my wife and I pay the full boat carrying these parasites. My son did recieve the Abigail Adams scholarship, which covers tuition, about 10% of the bill, he had to earn that with high MCAS/GPA. This will not end well, atleast for some .
Thank you,
ob.

All is not well; non-essential urban service jobs will fall 50% when inflation hits 30% on it’s way to 300% (tripling the money supply triples the prices). Most of the printed $’s supported the welfare maggot Metro-sexuals growth who now win the elections and for numerous reasons will turn the blue areas into Detroits. Lazy, stupid, immoral, violent, greedy liberal morons now run the country. It makes no sense since Nov2012 to make any further improvements/investments in my farm. Their savior and cheerleader Obama will order his domestic security forces to take my food (there will be a fight to the death) and give them my farm; but they will starve because they don’t have the intelligence, know how, gumption or capital (after inflation) to run it anywhere but into the ground. You can vote in communist but you can’t vote them out. Starvation is going to be hell; a real education. No, all is not well. A Christian civilization will return from out of the mountains; I can hear the banjos already.

Talk is cheap, as they say. So let’s go do something….like Exterminating these evil, incorrigible criminal class. These criminals(wicked mentality and descendants) never learned, repented, and rehabiliated because their wickedness is inherent, callous, and sordid. It’s high time to finish them off this time around, and confiscate all their loots.

Admin,
I don’t know about milk and eggs, but I do have beer and chili. I am in the 30+” zone. Not near enough to the Cape where they usually get rain. I was building homes on the Cape in Bourne and had a 30+’ snow event over a Saturday and Sunday. I was all dug out Monday morning drove the sight, every thing was pretty well snowed in except the loop road. Shovelled up to the trailer, still had electricty, so I went to check the sight as one of the usual white vans pulls through like all job sights. Sidewaller pulls up the street, gets out of the van with his crew of three, proceeds to shovel up the the duplex he was working on and shovel all the way around it. Sets up his pump jacks, he had already stored the shingles in the garage, and he proceeded to work as if nothing had happened. I do have to admire certain peoples working spirit, although I have to admit he was not American, he was Guatemalen, but he did have papers and spoke decent English.
Thank you,
Bob.

When an outside analysis uncovered serious flaws with thousands of home loans, JPMorgan Chase executives found an easy fix.

Rather than disclosing the full extent of problems like fraudulent home appraisals and overextended borrowers, the bank adjusted the critical reviews, according to documents filed early Tuesday in federal court in Manhattan. As a result, the mortgages, which JPMorgan bundled into complex securities, appeared healthier, making the deals more appealing to investors.

This was another awesome article…. Sometimes we really need the reality check and this one has some key issues that are being hushed in the name of confidence and consumption.

The education debacle… it’s indicative of the usual result endemic to modeling and its deductive flaws. College=Higher income. More people enrolled=More Graduates. More Graduates=Higher Income. The ineptitude of the logic behind this is inevitably going to show…. the gaps in cause/effect and exogenous factors could fill pages of print….. and will certainly be a festering trap not only for the underwriters (Tax Payers) but the undiscerning studets as well.

Watch the situation closely. Any more proverbial rain will render the paper-mache veneer of “All Is Well” away.

Marrisa,
I clicked the link you provided. Indeed very informative piece of work. Filled with facts and graphs.
They even quoted Chris Martenson: ” CPI has ceased to measure the cost of living but quantifies the cost of survival” instead. ” Peak oil is well explained too.
Oh, and there are some truly breathtaking pics posted in the article too!! Great find. Thank for posting the link.

Officials say both vehicles matched the description of the suspect vehicle. Police have confirmed that the occupants of the vehicles are not related to the Dorner case. LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said of the first shooting during today’s news conference, “Tragically, we believe this was a case of mistaken identity by the officers,” according to City News Service. Beck added that the vehicle was being driven “in the area of one of our primary protection details, one of the people that was under the most serhttp://dont-tread-on.me/?p=27608ious level of threat.” He continued, “The LAPD officers assigned observed a vehicle matching the suspect’s vehicle driving down the street with the lights turned out.” And they opened fire on the vehicle.

Scary that student loan lending being the ONLY driver of consumer credit besides ALLY/Bank of Obama car loans. Talk about malinvestment, undergraduate degrees for the underclass in useless majors.

There was a story on Perkins loans, a revolving government loan program for the ‘neediest students’ not being repaid. Seems Yale, George Washington University and some other decent schools being forced to sue their former students to collect since they cannot offer new students these loans if the old students don’t repay them. Obama, seeing a potential roadblock ahead in the funding of Chekov’s ‘eternal student’ wants to expand the program eight fold and make the Federal government the creditor to end those problem debt collection law suits and, no doubt, offer some milder form of debt repayment like, oh I don’t know, voter registration drives. Get $10 off your student loan for every voter you register might be the new debt relief program.

MANY thumbs up to Marissa for her link at 4:22. You should all read it … and you’ll be smarter than 99% of the sheeple out there. You’ll be almost as smart as Jim Quinn (and. me).

The section called “Loaded dice — how policies have been blind-sided by distorted data” starting on page 43 clearly show the level of bullshit the gub’ment and their paid puppeteers – the MSM – heap on us every fucking day. Just read this summary — does it not echo what Jim Quinn harps on all the time?

“The reliable data which policymakers and the public need if effective solutions are to be found is not available. Economic data (including inflation, growth, GDP and unemployment) has been subjected to incremental distortion, whilst information about government spending, deficits and debt is extremely misleading.” —- so very Quinnish!!!

Here is something they say that pisses me off though;

“In the nearer-term, the blue-chip rating of American government paper, reinforced by the reserve status of the US dollar, probably means that Washington can continue to live beyond its means for some years yet.”

“Flash” above hates police. Who started Civil War ll? Was it the police or the thugs? You support the bad guys and We support the guys fighting criminals and protecting us. Obama, the usurper, is the leader of a crooked gov’t that favors bad guys. Who did you support when OJ murdered Nicole and Ron? Do you really think George Z punched himself in the nose, then grabbed the punk and pulled him on top of himself and pounded his own head into the cement? When a cop (or a soldier) who is risking his life to protect me is accused of screwing-up, show me the proof. When the criminals get out of hand as they are in Wash DC, NYC, Chicago, etc, stupid liberals illegally disarm honest citizens and cut cops to get more money for welfare. Crime gets worse,duh. When cops are spread thinner and a-holes are shooting them, bad things happen to the bad guys; but it’s their own kinds damned fault. Point your finger and never look in the mirror; attack people like Bill Cosby, Allen West, Allen Keys, Ward Connerly; go on punk, one day you’ll make my day.

Stucky, I also thought of John Williams and ShadowStats when I read that… how his charts and analysis shows the reality of the situation when statistics are generated as they were in the past.

“Economic data has been undermined by decades of methodological change which have distorted the statistics to the point where no really accurate data is available for the critical metrics of inflation, growth, output, unemployment or debt. Fiscal data, meanwhile, obscures the true scale of government obligations.”

Whenever someone uses ShadowStats numbers to illustrate just how bad things are, people act like you’re a freak. They just don’t get it.

This is my first time commenting here. Just would like to add my voice to the chorus praising Marissa’s link. I spent a couple hours last night reading the entire report and studying the graphs. Some of the graphs, especially, made the small hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

I found the entire thing to be depressingly well-reasoned, well-supported, and well-argued.

Dear Flasher: What do I think is good and what is bad? I’m glad you asked. It is not a matter of IQ or race per se. I think it is obeying the laws of God (ref the Gospels, esp Matt 22:36-40) and men (ref the Constitution). Unfortunately when government is bad, it makes bad laws (ref Prov 29:2) and ignorant people are easily led astray (ref Hosea 4:6). Fortunately, there is wisdom in council (ref Proverbs 11:14 and 27:17). More specifically, Communism destroyed Africa, not Colonialism and Communism is destroying America, not Capitalism (ref Ecclesiastes 10:2 and read up esp on Cultural Communism”s Long March and what becomes of Useful Idiots). When people follow a fool, they suffer a fools fate (ref Matt 15:14). Draw close to God and He will draw close to you (James 4:8). I meant nothing as ad hominem and you were off on my IQ by a couple standard deviations. Molon Labe.

They are still making 0 down loans; and I mean 0$. There is a USDA program for outer areas; nothing down, nothing to bring, no closing; one was just done were the buyer brought 53cents, and the measley deposit was returned on top of this; total 53cents on a $350,000 home. The settlement officer took an instant photo because it was required by the lender. So it’s far from over; you don’t even need 3.5% in some areas.

Regardless , I never take personal offense at anyhting posted on the internet. Internet vitriol rolls off me like a donut off a patrol porkers plate,

BTW, why was it you left the police force?

You should get together with Stuck and trade some old PD war stories.I d on’t think it’s been quite a year since he left the Chatham County Police Department.

Or, maybe you could hit up our resident spook, SSS for some intelligence work .The DEA had to build a special prison just to house all the dangerous drug pushers Super sleuth busted.
And, there was no better CIA pilot flying lout of the golden Triangle than SSS. You two would definitely hit it of as new TBP dubs…being former LEO’s and all that.

Also , TBP has own very own scripture religious guru …goes by the ID, Son of Jeebus .Stick around long enough and if you’re lucky youi might get to enjoy one or two of his perals of wisdom.

STUCKY: Good show. FLASH: I believe you’re a leader and mean well. Don’t BS me & we’re OK. JEEBUS: You’re in a heap’a trouble boy! I mean it. If you can denigrate God here, can’t I defend God here? I ain’t no saint but I’ve learned He is real. I’m even officially a heretic myself because I don’t think the Gospels are perfect; yet God has spoken to me twice, saved my life twice, and sent St Michael to chew me out once. Either you really haven’t seen the Big Picture yet or you choose enmity with God. You really do not want to be the little guy yourself in that cartoon one day. It’s your life & your choice. PS: I’m not one advocating taking guns or Rights away; if you’re not a felon, are sane and they are yours, keep’em with my blessings.

BTW, you are correct.I am a leader. I’m always the first to holler “duck” and “it’s ever man for himself”, but that just the way we boomers roll….. individualism . It’s the ruination of this Republic….just ask SAH or Colma.

BTW, you never did answer the question of why you left law enforcement?

After looking a little closer at yesterday’s latest Consumer Credit report from the Fed, the growing student loan debt began calling out to be transformed into a chart and I was happy to oblige.

Technically, the “Student Loans” item below is nonrevolving credit held by the Federal Government, but, it’s basically all student loans and it’s been the most important factor in the recent rise in consumer credit.

It’s not really a big surprise to see what happened during the 2008 to 2010 period as the financial crisis led to widespread deleveraging for everyone except for those with student loans, but I was taken aback at how much student loans contributed to the growth in consumer credit over the last two years.

Student loans accounted for 72 percent of the increase in consumer credit in 2012 and, over the last two years, it accounted for 91 percent of the overall increase. Since 2008, student loan debt has increased by $434 billion while all other consumer credit declined by $322 billion. As I said … amazing!

When you consider in 2008 that ‘academia’ was Obama’s largest source of campaign funding it is not surprising that ‘Student Loans’ have become a both a political payback and an off budget way to expand government spending to levitate a broken economy through massive malinvestment. That so little thought is being given to the implications of this looming disaster beyond decrying the debt load facing students is deplorable but understandable since most of the people who should be looking ( objectively) into the matter are the beneficiaries of this spending boondoggle.

We can all pretend that college should be available for all and education is its own reward but the sad reality is only the top tier colleges are worthwhile as an “investment” and that there are a limited number of openings in the economy that require a specialized degree. An MBA is a credential not an indicator of business acumen and even as a ‘credential’ an MBA from the Wharton or Kellogg school of Business is one thing and one from Southeast Western State College quite another. We have confused the credential with the reason why the credential was, at one time, valuable. Mere admission to some schools was a sign of ability and or valuable social connections. We can say that Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg were geniuses but the fact
that they were also at Harvard gave them access to credibility and finance a freshman at Sonoma
State College would not have even if they had the identical idea. In fact, Facebook owes as much to its origin as an Ivy League social media platform as it does to anything else. If Zuckerberg had started a social media platform for the University of Phoenix would anyone have cared or even noticed?

I can’t help but think of the case of Jaycee Dugard, the 11 year old girl who was abducted, raped and kept in a backyard prison for almost two decades to raise the two daughters she bore the drug crazed ex-con who victimized her when I think of the our education system. This 11 year old girl was able to raise two daughters and teach them to read and write at grade levels beyond any she ever attended. At the same time she managed to run the ‘family’ printing business the criminal couple who did this her had started well enough provide this bizarre ‘household’ with enough resources such that they could fly below the authorities radar. If an 11 year old girl could do this under such incredible circumstances shouldn’t we wonder if our education system isn’t doing more harm than good. That people will learn when they have to learn and that paying $30,000 per year to read some books is a luxury this economy can no longer afford.

flash “Peace out bro….don’t taze me.”
robert, i wouldn’t buy any of flash’s humility. the fact that he’s shilling for jeebus is enough to make you see he’s off his rocker. jeebus is a hunchback drwarf with a corrupted sense of scripture. there are big dogs on this site that you gotta show some respect and there are little chihuahuas here that will nip at your heels. this is not a law enforcement site by any means but if it became a nun site, i’m out of here. i appreciate the scriptural outlook of your comment above. if you keep it up, more believers are encouraged to comment but unfortunately, flash et al will be writhing and moaning, ‘it burns, it burns’.

Secular humanism is a twisted, decrepit philosphy that has its roots in Roman Catholic intellectuals like Erasmus, who was also a Roman Catholic priest. It has evolved to the point of Marxist Liberation Theology in Latin America, where you have the absurd position of priests and nuns SUPPORTING a communist movement which, if successful, would do its utmost to neuter the Catholic Church or destroy it altogether. And thus possibly the priests and nums who supported it in the first place. Talk about a classic definition of suicide.

Between 1986 and 2008, enrollment in for-profit educational institutions swelled from little more than 300,000 to almost 1.8 million. Market share of for-profits in the higher education industry over the same time period rose from 2.4 percent to 9.2 percent.

Now the industry is seeing volatile times. Recent allegations of fraud perpetrated by individuals taking advantage of federal aid money through the for-profit education system have raised worries about somewhat overstated enrollment numbers. As higher education undergoes a sea change, however, for-profit education is poised to continue gaining share in the market.

A blind hog finds an acorn every now and then. Your quote from Erasmus is an example. I have no problem with the quote you posted from Erasmus, not do I have a problem with some of your John Kenneth Gailbraith quotes.

I do have a big problem with the philosophy of Erasmus, Gailbraith, and people like Rousseau. Would you like me to dig up a touchy-feely quote from the philosophical engineer of the French Revolution? Tell me how well that worked out.

SSS: I know John Paul actively found and fired (replaced) Liberation Theology priests. The Right Wing extremist shot’em; I saw a picture of a priest laying by his pulpit and a big picture of Che (if Obama had had a son…) behind him. Nonner, thanks for the comments. When TPTB banned the Bible and replaced it with Gaia, etc, We knew it would do to America’s soul what NAFTA/GATT was going to do to our economy. If you google “election-2012-mapp.jpg”, the right-hand map shows blue/red counties (blue being the good guys Flash); the commies are dealing but they really don’t have a good hand. They should be thrown out (ref Bela Kun and the Spanish Civil War) before we collapse like the USSR and countries all over Africa; but I have no expectation that conservatives will break first and We will suddenly find ourselves fighting for survival against gov’t backed mobs of Democratic Bolshevicks.

There is nothing inherently wrong with a for profit versus non profit educational institution, in fact, in practice there is little difference. Former Senator Bob Kerrey didn’t leave the US Senate to make $50,000 per year as president of a bible college in Nebraska, he left to make almost $1 million per year as president of a non profit university in New York. Being a Chancellor or President of a large public school may not pay as much as football coach or Wall St. Banker but it pays well and often comes with some very nice perks like a rent free multi million dollar official residence.

In fact we may need more for profit technical schools if they can deliver the goods. That is relevant instruction on current industry requirements. A, perhaps sore point with some here, but NPR did a story on a Dakota public school, sorry I forgot if it was north or south, that offered the only non military instruction on operating drone aircraft last year. Same thing with SCADA systems. Utilities and industrial facilities need people who know how to operate and calibrate remote monitoring systems yet how many junior or ever four year colleges offer degree programs in this field even though a graduate would have a job at a power plant the day after graduation?

If our public institutions still want to offer worthless degrees in the liberal arts then private industry should offer alternative instruction that will train people for real work at lower cost and less time. Instead we get shyster schools that will enroll anyone and offer half ass training in for non existent jobs because of Federally guaranteed student loans.

What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.
-Kurt Vonnegut

AWD: Great post! BOSTONBOB: Look up “How to Destroy the West Lenin” in Google Images; that is Cultural Communism. FLASH: Dorner is bad. He could have walked away and started over; we’ve all probably been discriminated against, fired unjustly, cheated, etc. If I had killed every SOB that crossed my path that deserved to die, there’d be bodies scattered on the streets like the trash. He chose his fate (he won’t be arrested; he’ll rot in Hell). How many other good people has he hurt with his insanity. When the officials slam the door in your face, take it to other venues like you’re doing; ref Youtube “cop punches victim (US soldier)”. Take it to the very top: God. Jesus was brutalized and murdered by the cops of His day; He even forgave them & that pleased God. In Rev 3:9, He says Jews but He could just as well said Christians today. I looked at your link; pretty good. I’d like for you to see “Zak Gariba Youtube”. I had a bad experience in NYC about 1974 with two bad cops when I was a young soldier just looking around Times Square. A friend, JB, who was 6’3″ 250 lbs, was handcuffed to a cell and beaten but he became a deacon later. Most cops are good especially in rural areas; another good reason to move out of big cities. Thank God for your leadership skills and that you still have a working conscience; every word we say influences many others.

Flash my left leaning friend: You realize the MSM/TV is propaganda and you need to watch as little as possible. Are you aware that decades ago the PTB purposely dumbed down police hiring; an IQ over 100 guaranteed you would not be chosen. There were several reasons for that, none good in my opinion; and like everything the leftist PTB dumbed down, and I can’t think of anything they didn’t, it naturally went to shit. So you got a lot of stupid Keystone pigs in LA; look in the mirror. I’m a conservative pal, throwing that crap at me don’t stick; I riccochet it back to where it belongs. Evidently, LA is overloaded with criminals and they have disarmed their cops brains and the system is breaking down, duh. Welcome to Red America. Now you want to squeal like a crybaby: I broke it, fix it now! White guys fault! Haven’t you heard “Ignorance can be fixed but stupid is permanent”. My guess is most LA cops aren’t evil but you sure are loaded down with losers. I am sure they are embarrassed to the man and want this corrected ASAP too. All ya’lls taxes will have to go up to pay for all the civil suits. The best you can do now is make retraining real elementary and go very slow. And change every MF’ing leftist policy (no need to study any of them; they are all stupid) everywhere today! May God have mercy.

siddell, Communism will work if’ it’s administered properly.
Obama has misled his supporters.We all thought he would have moved quicker in redistributing the wealth to the people, but he has sold out to the wall street fascists.

Personally, I think Dennis Kucinich would have bee a better choice to lead the brave new nation of progressives forward.

BTW it’s the Republican cops who are giving all the others a bad name.If all the Republicans were to be weeded out of law enforcement then the public’s opinion of policeman would greatly improve.

If all American just think positive then all our fiscal woes and cultural misunderstandings will just blow away.

Don’t you agree? Are are you one of those crazy right wing fundies that supported that deceitful war criminal George Bush?

Flash: no, yes, no, no,no, no. On #6: I resigned from the Executive Committee of the Republican Party of my county because of Bush about one month after he took office and I’ve been independent since. We probably agree on a lot about the Fascist Neocon Republicans (ref Aaron Russo Nick Rockefeller). Sorry but I hope that deceitful war criminal, Obama, continues to disappoint you. Be careful of what you hope for; Communism has never worked and never will work. The Chinese are more godless Fascist Capitalist than we are; and a lot less free; you would not like a Communist Utopia. I bid you farewell: the woods are lovely dark and deep but I have miles to go before I sleep. The war drums of the Fifth Column grow louder. Vaya con Dios.

i marvel at flash’s three pronged questioning technique; absolutely diabolical. old bob tried in a straight fashion to answer: no, yes, no, no, no…
you have to have your nuts tucked in and your aluminum hat firmly in place before engaging these old coots.

And remember kids, guns should only be in the hands of highly trained law enforcement officers.Their job is to protect and serve.Your job is to stay indoors ,preferably behind a concrete couch.

”

Law enforcement sources told The Times that at least seven officers opened fire. On Friday, the street was pockmarked with bullet holes in cars, trees, garage doors and roofs. Residents said they wanted to know what happened.

“How do you mistake two Hispanic women, one who is 71, for a large black male?” said Richard Goo, 62, who counted five bullet holes in the entryway to his house.

Please google “Civil War 2: Why the banking elite want riots in America”. It’s a trap using Communism for bait. The horror is that when the useful idiots take the cheese, everybody gets caught in the “urban martial law nets” TPTB can’t wait to deploy. We need to get smart and turn the tables on them. Question: Did Dorner ever contact the DOJ; they take such cases free since the 1964 Civil Rights Act (which does violate the 14th Amend Section 1 by the way). Dorner would have made the day for Jessie, Sharpton, Holder, etc, who would have gone to LA in a Flash (pun intended). Now I guess he is just dorner-kabob (sorry). That “war” turned out to be such a stupid waste of people and resources.